Conquering Bear

Conquering Bear (1800-19 August 1854) was a Lakota chief during the mid-19th century. His murder by the US Army in 1854 permanently ruined the peace between the Lakota and the United States government.

Biography
Conquering Bear was born to the Lakota Sioux tribe in 1800, and he became one of their chiefs during their period of expansion into the Black Hills during the 1850s. On 12 September 1851, as the US-appointed chief of the Lakota, he signed a treaty at Fort Laramie which confined nine Native American tribes to fixed boundaries and forced them to make peace with each other so as to not endanger travelling white settlers, in exchange for the US providing them with an annual payment of $50,000 in supplies for the next 50 years. On 19 August 1854, the fragile peace came apart. When a calf strayed from a Mormon wagon train into a Lakota camp, a Lakota warrior shot it with an arrow. 30 US Army soldiers from Fort Laramie marched into the camp, training a howitzer on the teepees. When Conquering Bear refused to hand over the man and instead promised to recompensate the Americans for the animal, a 45-minute argument began, and the American officer ordered his men to fire. Conquering Bear was the first to die. The enraged Lakotas massacred all but one of the American soldiers, who crawled back to Fort Laramie before he, too, died. His death ruined the peaceful relationship between the US government and the Lakota, who no longer trusted the Americans.